points with her. They had differed about some of them and she had always
said: "Ah but wait till you see how I shall do it at the time!" That was
usually her principal reason and her most convincing argument. She had
made some changes at the last hour--she was going to do several things
in another way. But she wanted a touchstone, wanted a fresh ear, and, as
she told Sherringham when he went behind after the first act, that was
why she had insisted on this private trial, to which a few fresh ears
were to be admitted. They didn't want to allow it her, the theatre
people, they were such a parcel of donkeys; but as to what she meant in
general to insist on she had given them a hint she flattered herself
they wouldn't soon forget.

She spoke as if she had had a great battle with her fellow-workers and
had routed them utterly. It was not the first time he had heard her talk
as if such a life as hers could only be a fighting life and of her frank
measure of the fine uses of a faculty for making a row. She rejoiced she
possessed this faculty, for she knew what to do with it; and though
there might be a certain swagger in taking such a stand in advance when
one had done the infinitely little she had yet done, she nevertheless
trusted to the future to show how right she should have been in
believing a pack of idiots would never hold out against her and would
know they couldn't afford to. Her assumption of course was that she
fought for the light and the right, for the good way and the thorough,
for doing a thing properly if one did it at all. What she had really
wanted was the theatre closed for a night and the dress-rehearsal, put
on for a few people, given instead of _Yolande_. That she had not got,
but she would have it the next time. She spoke as if her triumphs behind
the scenes as well as before would go by leaps and bounds, and he could
perfectly see, for the time, that she would drive her coadjutors in
front of her like sheep. Her tone was the sort of thing that would have
struck one as preposterous if one hadn't believed in her; but if one did
so believe it only seemed thrown in with the other gifts. How was she
going to act that night and what could be said for such a hateful way of
doing things? She thrust on poor Peter questions he was all unable to
answer; she abounded in superlatives and tremendously strong objections.
He had a sharper vision than usual of the queer fate, for a peaceable
man, of being involved in a